People in the News for October 30, 1997

Thursday, Oct. 30, 1997 | 9:34 a.m.

Finance fans, set aside for a moment your Dow jones, your intense interest in fluctuating pork-belly futures, and consider instead the big deal sitting on Dan Rather's table. With an enthusiastic cry of Who else we got?, CBS is offering to double his $3.5 million salary if he'll re-enlist through 2002. The proposed contract includes stock in CBS-owned Westinghouse along with the actual money. The deal would bring Rather in line with rivals Jennings and Brokaw. Why fatten Dan's wallet now, at age 66, when he still has two years left on his cheaper contract? Because star-hungry CNN has been openly wooing him. CBS quickly decided not to risk losing the man whose "Evening News" is a solid third place among the three network newscasts and whose "48 Hours" is flirting with cancellation. Anyway, CBS has no talent on the bench of sufficient wattage to replace him. There's a big Attaboy, Dan!

Briefly

It was an unplanned unconscious decision -- Barbara Bush did not drop out of Smith College 53 years ago with a retirement plan --to hell with a nursing career, I'll just marry a future president! -- already in mind. It just turned out that way. But, as Bar pointed out to the current crop of young gals at Smith, there are only so many eventual one-term presidents out there. "Don't do what I did. Stay in school," she urged them. "Study hard, work hard, play hard, too." She was on hand to dedicate the school's new $7 million Barbara Bush Center for Science and Technology. She called it "the most flattering, exciting thing I could possibly imagine" -- ouch, sorry, George! Although she's identified less with science and technology than with transcribing books for her dog, Bush says she is, in the hip lingo of today's techno-youth culture, "a computer junkie." "I dabble in Microsoft, check my e-mail and even surf on the Net occasionally," she said. She's wired! Attagirl, Bar!

Compiled by Scott Dickensheets